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November 10, 2005

I stumbled across this set on eBay, and figured it was a bootleg.Turns out, it is an official Chinese release of all 98 episodes of the original Transformers TV series.Twenty-four DVDs with four episodes on each, plus Transformers: The Movie, all contained in an attractive wooden (well, particle-board) box.There’s even a poster of Optimus Prime and Hot Rod included.

Even better, though, is the fact that all episodes are presented in the original English.All you have to do is turn off the Chinese subtitles.The image quality is as good as can be expected, with no compression artifacts that I can see.

So far, my son Sidney and I have watched about 32 episodes.I had forgotten almost everything about the show except for the characters, and really didn’t expect much from the stories.I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the stories for many of the episodes are actually interesting.

There are three seasons of Generation 1, with the movie falling between Seasons 2 and 3.Season 1 is short, and full of animation mistakes (All three Decepticon jets randomly colored like each other, reversed transformation sequences, the occasional blue Optimus Prime, etc.).Season 2 has new Transformers popping in out of nowhere around episode 28, as if they’ve always been there and we just haven’t met them.

The best thing about this set is how cheap it is!You can get the whole thing for less than $60 on eBay, shipping from China included.Considering that the series was broken up into about 6 DVD sets here in the US, each one sold for between $30-$40, it’s a real bargain.

August 31, 2005

I finished Resident Evil 4 quite a while back, but – in case you haven’t heard -- I’m lazy.I figure I’d better write a review of it before I forget the details.No matter how much time passes, though, I’m not in any danger of forgetting how unbelievably good this game was.

When this game was under development, Capcom seemed to take great pride in teasing us with the fact that it would have “no zombies” in it.Instead, as it turns out, this installment stars Spanish villagers “possessed” by parasitic creatures known as “Las Plagas”.Same diff, you say?Not in the least.Rather than mindlessly lurching towards you and trying to bite your neck off, these enemies will charge at you, dodge your bullets, shout curses in Spanish, and work as a team.

You play as Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 2, now out of the police business and working as a secret service agent.The President’s daughter has gone missing, and you’re off to agrarian European locales to search for her.That’s when everything goes predictable nuts as usual, sans the requisite T-Virus outbreak and Umbrella Corporation secret base crawling.

But who really cares about the plot when the game is this fun to play?Think of any aspect of Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3, or Code Veronica that just flat out annoyed you.You know, all of the things that have traditionally defined “Survival Horror” as a genre.Let’s go down the list and see how Resident Evil 4 blows away the stereotypes:

Survival Horror Cliche' No. 1: Tiny Inventory Capacity

How many times in a Resident Evil game have you had to decide what useful item you should drop in order to pick up a necessary item, such as a miniscule key?Well, worry no longer:Capcom finally wised up.Items such as keys and mandatory puzzle-solving items do not take up any space in your inventory, saving that space for ammo, weapons, and healing items.This also means no more annoying “This key is no longer needed.Want to drop it?” dialogs.

Survival Horror Cliche' No. 2: Clunky Controls

A scary game should not be scary simply because the controls are so bad that you’re afraid you won’t be able to turn quickly enough to attack your assailant.Thankfully, the control scheme has been completely reworked.You can reload on the fly, and always have an over-the-shoulder view with a handy laser sight on all of your guns.Switching to your knife requires simply holding down a shoulder button so you can smash barrels and slice enemies quickly without wasting precious bullets.Context sensitive use of the A button will allow you to kick a stunned opponent, dive through windows, or perform other actions when they are available to you.Intuitive controls in a survival horror game?Yes, seriously!

Survival Horror Cliche' No. 3: Limited Saves

Ugh.Whoever came up with the idea of having to collect ink ribbons (and using up precious inventory space) in order to save your game was a sadist.RE4 still uses typewriters for the method of saving, but thankfully you can save as often as you like without the need for ink ribbons.

Survival Horror Cliche' No. 4: Unlimited enemies, limited bullets.

Backtrack through areas in an earlier RE game and you will often find them re-populated with zombies you have previously expended valuable ammo to clear out.Of course, the ammo and medical supplies would not be replenished, just the baddies.Not so in RE4.Ammo and healing items can be found on defeated enemies, and areas usually do not spawn new villains after you’ve been through once.

Survival Horror Cliche' No. 5: Bad Voice Acting

Okay, so the dialogue is still goofy but the lines for the most part are spoken very well.Don’t be picky…in RE 1 the voice actors couldn’t even pull off lines like “Don’t OPEN that DOOR!” with believable inflection.

Survival Horror Cliche' No. 6: Monotonous Backtracking

Unlike previous installments, RE4 doesn’t attempt to make up for the lack of locales by forcing you to walk back and forth through them.Instead, they *gasp* actually made the game world HUGE.I was shocked at how much ground I had covered while playing, and then realized I hadn’t even finished with disc 1.

The bottom line is that this game is fantastic in just about every way you’d hope it to be.There are tons of unlockables that add to the replay value (new weapons to buy from the merchant, a shooting gallery with collectible bottle caps, even an additional story to play through), and it’s worth playing through more than once.

And that’s a big testament to the quality of this game.Nowadays I have so many games backed up that I rarely even get to finish them.This one I played through twice, which is something I haven’t done in a long while.

If you have a PS2, this game will be available to you soon.The graphics obviously won’t be quite as good, but it will include some extra bonuses and, of course, still be a joy to play.Be sure to check it out.

June 01, 2005

I’ve been getting a lot of flak for saying that “Revenge of the Sith” was for the most part a steaming pile, but it seems I’m in good company. Although my review focused more on the movie’s failure to adequately complete the story, I’m glad to see that others noticed the absurdity of Obi-Wan’s “Only a Sith deals in absolutes” remark. Take this excerpt from the article “No Faith in This Force” by Orson Scott Card (yes, that guy who wrote “Ender’s Game”):

But in a pivotal scene, Obi-Wan says what amounts to the same thing: “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”

Isn’t that odd? The only thing both sides agree on is that people who believe in absolute good and evil are bad!

I suspect that Lucas realized, after writing "Good is a point of view," that all his friends actually believed that. So he had to make it clear that moral relativism was the right way after all—so he had Obi-Wan say that absolutism was a Sith thing, even though in the actual story, the best of the Jedis show an unbending commitment to absolute Good.

It’s a terrible thing, I suppose, for a writer to invent a religion and then discover that he and all his friends are on the wrong side of it.

May 19, 2005

I have said all through the prequel Star Wars Trilogy that I would reserve judgment until the story had been completed. I have been one of George Lucas’ most committed defenders. After all, it’s his story for him to tell as he sees fit. Well, this morning at 2:30 AM I finished watching the final installment. After twenty-seven years of wondering how these events had transpired, the wait was finally over.

I was disappointed.

I know the day after is probably too early for me to really make a fair judgment. I was tired and feeling especially cynical as I watched the movie…I couldn’t seem to get myself out of “critique mode”, but at the moment I feel like I waited twenty-seven years expecting a present, only to be patronized and slapped in the face.

Below are spoilers. I’ll now invoke the standard web notification of this fact.

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SPOILER ALERT!!!
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Here are my major qualms with the film.

Anakin turned to the dark side because he had a dream in which Padme died in childbirth. The problem with this is that she only died in childbirth because he joined the darkside in order to find a way to save her because he had the dream! That’s a paradox. The fact that he saw the vision couldn’t be the cause of the vision coming to pass.

Secondly, too much of the movie was spent watching sweeping shots of landscape as ships landed and took off. Like in Episode II, action scenes were separated by dry and mostly unnecessary dialogue. And compared to the duels in Episode I and II, the choreography in this film was incredibly sloppy. There were very few “wow” moments where someone did something amazing. Often, in fact, it looked like characters had no idea how to hold a sword (Dooku, Palpatine, and Windu).

There was no reason to include Kashyyyk in this film other than to show us some wookies. It was a pointless diversion. Although I did enjoy it, it had absolutely no bearing on the plot. When you’ve got so much story to tell and only two hours to do it in, your time might be better spent elsewhere.

In the end, Owen and Beru Lars stare off into the sunset immediately after being handed baby Luke. Why? What are they looking at that’s so important? Is this just the standard sunset procedure for Tatooinians? How forcedly-melodramatic can you get? I personally think the movie should have ended on a shot of Vader and Sidious standing in a hall filled with devoted followers…sort of an anti-medal ceremony from Episode IV.

But the greatest offense this movie makes in my opinion is the pervasiveness of moral relativism. It seems like Lucas waited until he had nothing to lose before he decided to shove his ill-conceived worldview down our throats completely. Even the opening scroll tries to tell us that there really are no good guys and bad guys…just different choices and points of view.

This horribly bankrupt philosophy comes to a head when Anakin says to Obi-Wan, “If you are not my friend, then you are my enemy.” This is almost a direct quote of Jesus Christ from Matthew 12:30. And how does Obi-Wan respond?

“Only the Sith speak in absolutes.”

In other words, Anakin (and by extension, Jesus) was the worst kind of evil because he believed in absolutes. If I were Anakin, my reply would have been, “Are you absolutely sure of that, Obi-Wan?”

The Star Wars universe is one in which the battle lines have always been clearly drawn between Light and Dark. Does Lucas really expect us to swallow a relativistic paradigm within the framework of his dualistic universe? It’s absurd. Stick to the special effects shots, George. Leave religion and ethics to somebody who has a clue what they’re talking about.

Alright, look. In order to make an accurate prequel, Lucas had a very short list of things he had to show us in order to maintain continuity based on dialogue spoken by characters in the original trilogy. He succeeded in showing us that Anakin was a great pilot before he met Obi-Wan and that they did fight together in the Clone Wars. Beyond that, he failed to accurately sync the movies up with these lines:

1) Obi-Wan: “Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.”
Was he? It looks to me more like Palpatine tricked him into taking the dark path. Anakin signed up based on the belief that he would be saving his wife from the future he saw in a vision and serving the greater good by stopping the “power hungry Jedi” from taking over. Palpatine orchestrated a situation in which it looked as if Mace Windu was attacking him out of pure greed, and Anakin made a rash decision. This turned him into a raging monster who would slaughter children on command? I don’t buy it.

2) Obi-Wan: “…and he was a good friend.”
Was he? The movies do not show Anakin and Obi-Wan ever really getting along. Mostly Anakin is defying Obi-Wan or complaining about the way he treats him, and Obi-Wan is often condescending (Especially in Episode II).

3) Obi-Wan: “Vader hunted down and murdered the Jedi.”
No, turns out he didn’t hunt down or murder any Jedi. He simply killed a bunch of Jedi-in-training children who were left helpless in the temple. The Clone Troopers killed most of the Jedi, and Palpatine killed the rest.

4) Luke: “What do you remember of your Mother?” Leia: “Mostly images, really. My mother died when I was very young. She was very beautiful, but sad.”
Up until Lucas killed Padme in childbirth, who would have assumed that this speech was about Leia’s adoptive mother on Alderaan? Of course, this wasn’t his original intention when he wrote Return of the Jedi. Padme would be the mother with cause to be sad, and there would be no point in mentioning that her adoptive mother died when she was young. Lucas fudged it in the prequel because he couldn’t figure out how to pull it off, I guess. Still, the juxtaposition of Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader with Padme giving birth was pretty cool.

In my mind, there are several things that could have made this movie much better. A more believable fall for Anakin, Qui-Gon appearing as a Jedi spirit instead of just being spoken of by Yoda (which would have still been a deus ex machina anyway), seeing Yoda arrive on Dagobah, and maybe Vader in his suit doing SOMETHING other than give the stereotypical “scream of mental anguish” and looking out a window.

I’m being very critical, I know that. It’s just a movie, I also know that. It was an okay film, and I might even come to really enjoy it with time and subsequent viewings, but with a little more effort on the part of George Lucas I think this had potential to easily be the best movie of the six. As it stands today, I think I need to watch The Empire Strikes Back, if only just to remind myself why I fell in love with this series in the first place.

April 08, 2005

Remember Metal Gear on the NES? We’ve come a long way since Snake uttered the words, “UH OH THE TRUCK HAVE STARTED TO MOVE!!”

Metal Gear Solid 1 for the PlayStation was a great game. It really kicked off the whole “sneaking mission” genre. It was a little heavy on lengthy radio discussions, but you could forgive it because the story and gameplay were so fresh and enjoyable.

”Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of liberty” on the PlayStation 2 was also a great game, but – strangely enough -- it failed to live up to the expectations created by its demo. As it turned out, the area presented in the demo was by far the most enjoyable part of the game, after which you took the role of a whiny kid named Raiden who is involved in the silliest, most far-fetched conspiracy I’ve ever played through. The graphics and game engine were incredibly polished, but the setting they dropped you in was a dull hexagonal oil rig. Combine that with even more lengthy radio conversations and the almost non-existence of Solid Snake himself and you’ve got a game that you probably won’t want to play through more than once.

So how is “Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater?” I was surprised to find myself really enjoying it. Set in the early 1960s instead of the present or near future, it is unique in that you play as the man who Solid Snake from the other Metal Gear games is a clone of, and who later becomes the elusive villain, "Big Boss." MGS3 also has the distinction of being the only game I know of to actually have Lyndon B. Johnson as a character. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a positive, but it is interesting nonetheless. It’s a story full of intrigue, Russian defectors, an expectedly crazy cast of villains and allies, and as the name implies, the consumption of reptiles.

Much of your time in this game is spent sneaking through the jungle and changing your camouflage to blend in with different environments, all the while killing animals and harvesting plants to maintain your stamina as you subdue or outmaneuver guards. Become injured and you have to use your medical supplies to treat the wound (disinfectants, splints, suture, etc.). It’s all a lot more fun than it may sound.

Every aspect of the MGS game play has been improved, but the happiest improvement for me is the sheer volume of incredibly beautiful game-engine cinematic storytelling (as opposed to text spoken over the radio). There’s never a dull moment, and there are often multiple ways to achieve a goal.

Boss fights are clever rather than especially difficult, which is a plus. One fight is a sniping duel that can take a very long time to complete and requires skill and patience. Other sections have you performing unique tasks such as gunning down enemies as you ride in a motorcycle sidecar in a dramatic escape from a pursuing nuclear tank.

The bottom line: If you loved MGS1 but were left a little sour after playing MGS2, don’t count this one out. It nicely ties up the Metal Gear story by explaining a bit of its origin (including a young Revolver Ocelot) and even making MGS2 seem a bit less confusing in the process.

January 17, 2005

I love Japanese pop culture. The weirder and less comprehensible by rational human beings it is, the better. That’s why Katamari Damacy for the PS2 has such a special place in my heart. This game is closer to the absurdity of a real life “Mr. Sparkle” ad than anything I’ve ever seen. That, and it’s a lot of fun to play.

You’re the 2cm tall prince of all creation. Your father is the incredibly huge King of all creation. He got drunk, fell asleep, or something (he never admits exactly what happened), and accidentally destroyed every star in the sky. Now it’s your job to visit Earth and roll stuff up on your katamari – a ball that literally anything sticks to – and then return it to your father so that he can make stars or constellations out of all the stuff. The quality of the result is dependent on the size of your katamari and the time you took to make it.

The controls are simple: In army tank style, you use both analog sticks to steer your katamari around the world. You can roll up anything smaller than the ball’s circumference. In the beginning you roll around on a tabletop, picking up tacks, erasers, soy sauce packets, etc. Quickly you move to mice, cell phones, cassette tapes, and so on. Later you can venture outside picking up people, pets, signs, fences, you name it. By the end of the game you are rolling around the ocean picking up islands, ocean-liners, amusement parks, and basically anything else you bump into. The seamless way that the game scales down the environment as your katamari grows larger is quite impressive.

Back on the prince’s tiny planet you keep a log of every one of the hundreds of different types of items you have collected. They are sorted either by type or by size. Some are labeled rare, and others have proper names (certain people you were lucky enough to roll up, for example).

Most stages have a time limit to create a katamari of a certain size, but other stages have specific goals for creating a constellation. For example, to create the constellation Cancer you must roll up as many crabs as you can. To create Virgo you must roll up pretty girls. Cygnus requires swans. You get the picture.

The excellent Japanese soundtrack has remained completely intact in the American version, and is pretty diverse. Once you finish the game you can access a menu that allows you to hear all of the music and watch all of the cut scenes at your leisure, which is cool.

Interspersed between stages are short hand painted animations that unveil a nonsensical story featuring two Japanese kids traveling with their mother to watch their father take off in a rocket to the moon. Whether intentional or not, these are hilarious.

This game was released in the US at an amazingly low $19.95 price point. If you own a PS2 and are even slightly intrigued by what you’ve read here, I highly recommend you pick it up.

January 13, 2005

The Metroid series has always held a special place in my heart. When I was a 7th grader I spent months fantasizing about what the game would be like based on one or two black and white screenshots featured in “Nintendo Fun Club News” and the J.C. Penny catalog. To this day I can literally play through the entire game in my head. Were you aware that I’m an uber-dork? Just checking.

As much as I loved the original, I was prepared to hate Metroid Prime for the Gamecube since it wasn’t made by Nintendo in Japan, but by some upstart company based in Texas called “Retro Studios”. Not only that, but they were making it into a first-person 3D game. I was certain that my memories would be destroyed by the result.

To my surprise, Metroid Prime was incredible. I couldn’t believe how well the series had been translated into 3D. And now, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is basically more of the same, which to me is a good thing.

With Metroid Prime 2, the series has finally reached a point where the developers feel comfortable straying a bit from the tried-and-true plot formula. Instead of trying to thwart a new Metroid threat that ends with the destruction of an entire planet, this story finds Samus answering a distress call from space marines on the planet Aether, crashing her ship while responding to it, and uncovering a mysterious world that has been split into two dimensions: light and dark. Metroids do come into play, but only as minor enemies brought to the planet to supply power for Space Pirate technology.

This time Samus has her abilities stolen from her by the shadowy Ing creatures, but she actually manages to retain several that you have always had to collect in previous games (charge beam, morph ball, and the varia suit).

In a concept borrowed from Zelda III: A Link to the Past, you must travel between dimensions to solve puzzles and reach secluded areas. The light and dark sides are identical spacially and mostly identical geographically, but Dark Aether has a poisonous atmosphere and generally more dangerous enemies. And herein lies one of the cooler innovations in the game: Just being in the atmosphere of Dark Aether drains your life away. Because of this, the Luminoth (the good guys from Light Aether) have strategically placed light crystals in the Ing dimension which generate domes of light you can use as a refuge before trekking out into the palpable darkness. Creatures will attack you from outside the safe areas. The feeling is successfully claustrophobic until later in the game when you acquire different suits that minimize or remove the damage caused by Dark Aether’s atmosphere.

Each of your stolen powers is possessed by an Ing boss who is utilizing it with great effectiveness within the dark dimension. In standard Metroid fashion you obtain each of these abilities in turn which then provide a way to reach some new area or an item in an old area that you then have to backtrack to. And yes, there is a LOT of backtracking.

Aside from the standard quest for your items, you are also tasked with finding the keys to open the doors to three temples in Dark Aether, entering the temples, defeating the bosses, taking their power sources and returning them to the temples’ counterparts on Light Aether. When all of the power is successfully restored, Dark Aether will crumble and the surviving Luminoths will be free to awaken from stasis to a peaceful world.

Two new weapons add another new dimension to this game: The dark and light beams. Unlike every other beam weapon Samus has used in the past, these beams require ammo. Defeating a monster with the light beam generates dark ammo and vice versa.

Just as the planet Aether has a dark opposite, you soon discover that Samus has an evil doppelganger in the form of Dark Samus. She is comprised completely of phazon energy, and shows up to challenge you several times throughout the game.

The graphics are incredible. There aren’t as many visor tricks as in the first Prime (steam fogging up your visor, bug splatters, reflections of your own face), but one unique enemy does hit you with a computer virus that crashes your suit. System data and garbled text fill your field of view and your vision becomes a grainy black and white with a horrible frame rate. You have to press a certain button combination (a la ctrl+alt+delete) to reset your suit, after which you must wait helplessly while your weapon and targeting systems come back online.

The plot is pretty predictable fare, some sections are monotonous, and some bosses are annoyingly difficult to defeat, given the length of the battles against them. Like some other games (Metal Gear Solid 2 and Mario Sunshine come to mind), the developers have built some great play mechanics with a lot of possibilities, and then given you a less than adequate world to fully explore those possibilities in. Many of Samus acquired abilities (to ride beams of light, the Riddick-style sonic visor, the Screw Attack and grapple beam) have almost no use in the game. It seems they had to artificially generate places to use them, and it shows.

Still, it has a greater overall quality than most games, as is to be expected from Nintendo. Although the plot feels more like a side story in the life of Samus than a major mission, it is a very fun ride and one of the few “first person adventure” games out there.

December 13, 2004

As you may have heard, the source code for Halflife 2 was stolen sometime last year. Its developer, Valve, has been mired in a lawsuit with Vivendi Universal (once known as Sierra On-Line). The game’s release was delayed for over a year beyond its supposedly firm release date. Usually this sort of story ends with a crushing review of a much anticipated game that should have never been released by moral human beings at all (Daikatana, Superman 64, etc.).

Thankfully in this case, just the opposite is true. I completed Halflife 2 on Sunday night, November 28. I’m happy to report that the game is not only great, but it is so great that it makes Halflife 1 look like somebody’s high school class project.

I mean that in no way as an insult to the original. At the time, Halflife (which I initially thought was going to be Sierra’s lame attempt at cashing in on the Quake craze) handily blew away everything else. I even bought a new video card (Voodoo 2) just so it would look good.

Lately I’ve noticed that a good test of a game is to let my 3 year old son mess around with it. Sid has had a lot of fun picking up items and making them interact with each other in the HL2 world. Drop a cinder block on a box full of bottles and the bottles will break. Pick up shipping crates with an industrial magnet crane and swing them around, strewing their contents onto the beach. Throw a baby doll at a swing and it will realistically react. Heck, the baby doll might land on the see-saw and adjust its balance. The physics are that detailed.

All of the original Halflife fun is here: Lots of semi-intelligent goons to kill, headcrabs to club, and plenty of creepy, claustrophobic environments to explore all by your lonesome. But Halflife 2 adds to that dynamic with a boat and a car to drive (complete with mounted weaponry), “Tremors” style sequences where you have to build pathways across the desert to keep from disturbing the ant lions lying just below the surface, later leading ant lions as you ambush a facility and watch them rip apart your enemies, and of course the clever “gravity gun”. With this tool you can pick up items and fire them at enemies, or even zap wrecked cars to clear the road.

The graphics/physics engine is flawless. The gameplay is completely immersive and never annoying. But hey, it’s me. I can still manage to find a few things to complain about.

The game seems a bit short. Maybe it’s just because I’ve played 6 years worth of Halflife clones since HL1 came out, but I remember the Black Mesa research facility seeming huge compared to the areas I traversed in HL2.

Later in the game, you come into command of people you run across. While they can follow simple directions (“go to where I’m pointing” or “come here”) and don’t often run in front of you while you’re shooting or shoot through you towards the enemy, they generally just follow you around like a puppy, stand too close, and hem you in on stairwells so you can’t easily get around them.

There were aspects of the game in pre-release videos that seem to be non-existent in the final game. For example, I remember seeing screenshots and video of a translucent blue tentacle skewering a guy and dragging him underwater. I never saw a creature like that. Also, combat with the giant, lumbering Striders does take place in the game, but not quite in the way it was demonstrated at E3. I’m sure a lot of that was just proof of concept, though.

While I won’t spoil the ending, I will say that the game asks more questions than it answers (if it answers any at all) and leaves you begging for a quick sequel. Hopefully a full sequel will be the first add-on pack, as I really don’t see how this game would lend itself to the “different viewpoint of the same event” concept that every add-on to the original HL utilized.

So the game is great, and is a fine way to test your relatively new video card in ways it has never been tested before. If you loved the original, it might even be worth buying a new computer/video card that will let you experience Halflife 2 to its fullest.

October 14, 2004

I’m not a driving game fan. I enjoy Gran Turismo games because of their realism and depth, but beyond that, I generally steer clear. Burnout 3, however, has proven to be another exception to the rule.

The premise is simple: You drive down the road at blistering speed (amateur driver, open course) and try to cause as many accidents as possible. Steer, gas, brake, boost. It’s a simple concept that is amazingly fun and addictive.

There are several modes of play beyond the standard races and grand prix events you’d expect. Some of the most fun events are “Road Rage”, which has you trying to wreck as many of your opponents as you can before your own car gets totaled, and “crash” events in which your objective is to drive into a busy intersection and attempt to instigate the biggest pileup possible (after which the property damage is added up to determine your score). It’s like a controlled environment for conducting physics experiments that only a true idiot would ever attempt in real life.

While every part of this game oozes quality (an incredible sense of speed, massive detail with no slowdown, etc.), I think it’s the little touches that make it really shine. When you ram someone off the road or into an oncoming vehicle, time slows down and the camera pans to the car as it careens through the air. Then, moments later, it swings back to show you barreling down the road at an even faster rate of speed fueled by the nitro boost you received for the takedown.

When your own vehicle crashes, you can cause the game to switch into slow motion, as well. Using the control stick in slow-mo allows you to steer your car through the air in an attempt to position yourself for “aftertouch takedowns” – subsequent wrecks caused by your own flaming hulk. Points are tallied in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater style at the bottom of the screen as you crash (Into Bus + 2.3 Second Air + Barrel Roll x3 + 326 ft Sunroof Skid + Into Van + Explosion).

Another addictive quality is that you seem to earn some new race, crash, vehicle, “signature takedown” snapshot, trophy, or other award after just about every race, win or lose. One of my favorite perks is earning newspaper headlines featuring the catastrophe you caused when you do enough damage in a crash event.

Burnout 3 apparently has fun on-line play, too, but I really don’t mess with that stuff. It would be too much trouble to run the DSL to the front of the house.

I really dig this game, and I think pretty much anybody would. You don’t even have to be a good driver, since it rewards you for doing the thing that most racing game penalize you for: crashing.

October 04, 2004

I had forgotten about many of the special edition additions to Return of the Jedi. The old song performed at Jabba’s palace (Lapti Nek?) has been replaced with a new one, complete with a new “male” vocalist in addition to Sy Snoodles and a female Greedo…I forget the name of their race.

The only notable special effect repairs in this one are the removal of Anakin’s eyebrows in the scene where Vader’s helmet is removed and the swap out of the old Anakin actor as a ghost for the young one. Lucas’ explanation is that the young Anakin is how he should appear because this is how he looked when he “died” as a Jedi. It seems a bit odd and out of place to me, but I suppose it does tie the six movies together a little bit.

Also added is footage of people celebrating on Naboo after the Death Star’s destruction.

I still hate the new ending music during the celebration that replaces the Ewok victory song. At the point where it shows the Jedi spirits, the original music swelled into an emotional moment, like you had been momentarily pulled away from the celebration to see something important and sublime. The new music falls flat, doesn't do this pivotal scene justice, and really kills its impact.

People downplay this movie, chiefly because of the Ewoks. I was nine when this movie originally came out. I think I was part of Lucas’ target audience at the time, and frankly, I never had a problem with the Ewoks. I think people who complain about them are trying to somehow cling to the idea that these films are “deep” and “mature”. They’re not. They are action figure revenue generators with a shallow moral about a Buddhist concept of good versus evil. They’re fun and imaginative, but they are not high drama. Get over it.

Those of us who grew up loving these movies seem to have forgotten how different our expectations were as children. All of these movies have bad acting. All of them have huge leaps in the characters’ relationships between films that don’t seem justified (especially between Empire and Jedi, because almost no time has passed). These films are to be enjoyed, not deified. They are ground breaking science fiction films from the standpoint of special effects and creating a believable universe that rally pulls you in.

After watching Episodes 4-6 again, I am now much happier with episodes one and two, and I really can’t wait for episode three.

Favorite Books

Ravi Zacharias: Can Man Live Without God?An amazing book that makes the case for God not by citing the Bible or great theologians, but by analyzing the philosophies of famous atheists and showing their flaws.

C. S. Lewis: Mere ChristianityC.S. Lewis was an atheist for much of his life. Appropriately, this book makes the case for the existance of God first and Christianity second with carefully outlined and surprisingly simple reasoning. I consider this required reading for anyone searching for meaning.

C. S. Lewis: Space TrilogyReligious Sci-Fi Fantasy: A very tiny genre. In "Out of the Silent Planet", "Perelandra", and "That Hiddeous Strength", C.S. Lewis manages to tackle difficult theological questions as we follow Dr. Ransom in his adventures on Mars, Venus, and back on Earth. My favorite science fiction series by far.